Spring Street kicks off Dandenong corridor level crossing removal project

The business end of getting the Dandenong corridor grade separation project moving is nigh, with the month of June set to see the Government receive expressions of interest from interested parties to undertake the work.

The project will seek to remove the nine level crossings that are currently restricting train frequencies between Caulfield and Dandenong stations on the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines, the city's busiest. Similarly Spring Street wishes to have all nine level crossings removed as part of one larger project in order to gain synergies, allow work to be coordinated and have the individual crossings separated sooner according to a media release.

The nine roads to be grade separated are:

• Grange Road, Carnegie
• Koornang Road, Carnegie
• Murrumbeena Road, Murrumbeena
• Poath Road, Murrumbeena
• Clayton Road, Clayton
• Centre Road, Clayton
• Corrigan Road, Noble Park
• Heatherton Road, Noble Park
• Chandler Road, Noble Park

Koornang Road, Murrumbeena Road, Poath Road and Clayton Road are adjacent to Carnegie, Murrumbeena, Hughesdale and Clayton stations respectively and as a result of grade separating the level crossings each of those four stations will also need to be rebuilt.

On June 2, the Level Crossing Removal Authority is hosting an industry briefing and expressions of interest will close toward the end of June. The Public Transport Minister's media release states works will commence in 2016 and be complete by 2018.

Comment

Three Frankston Line level crossings and stations, one Glen Waverley Line level crossing and station, five new stations as part of the Melbourne Metro Rail project and now four more stations as part of this Dandenong corridor project; there's currently a lot of design going on around rail stations at present.

In fact, the Pakenham and Cranbourne Lines will become station architectural tour in their own right - from the 1880s era so-called "MATH" (Malvern, Armadale, Toorak, Hawksburn) stations, to 1990s era slap-up-a-platform-and-a-shed stations of Cranbourne and Merinda Park - the two lines are going to be anything by architecturally ordinary when travelling on them from end to end.

It's for this reason - sheer volume of station rebuilds - that when designs are finalised and high-quality renders can be retrieved from the State Government, we're planning to expand our project database to track each individual station through our normal data gathering process. Given the State Government aims to complete 20 level crossing removals in its first term, we're going to be busy.

Media release

Lead image credit: Wikipedia.